A medical procedure commonly performed on many hospital patients and also on many outpatients is the establishment of flow communication with a vein or an artery of the patient to facilitate infusion or withdrawal of various fluids therein or therefrom. For such purposes, it is not uncommon to use an intravenous catheterized catheter, which normally includes a removable needle, having the necessary rigidity to penetrate into a vein, in combination with a catheter, having the necessary flexibility needed to minimize subsequent trauma to the vein or artery.
While inserting such a device to facilitate such venipuncture and infusion, various tasks normally competitively vie for the practitioner's hands, sometimes causing the procedure to be somewhat awkward while trying to simultaneously perform the several different tasks with only two hands. Also, if the patient who is to receive the infusion is self-installing the infusion device, only one hand may be available at any one time.
Although some of the devices taught by the prior art claim to be operable with only one hand, a complicating factor is usually the separation of the catheter from the needle, with the prior art devices usually leaving much to be desired in that regard.
What is needed is a device and a method, such as a constantly applied bias between a catheter, more specifically an intravenous catheter, and a needle whereby a simple release activity mechanically and automatically initiates such separation, thus enabling a user to easily and single-handedly initiate the installation of the catheter for infusion and other purposes.